Bible in a Year, Week 1: Intro, Genesis 1-14, Psalms 1-5, John 1-5.

Okay, so I'm pretty excited about this - hence the reason I'm up at 11:30 PM writing it. I just couldn't sleep thinking about everything there is to discuss. If you're here, you probably know I'm reading the Bible in a year - a fairly common thing that a lot of people start at the beginning of a new year. It's been on my bucket list to read the Bible from cover to cover for a while, but I just never felt like starting a year-long commitment (because we know how I am with commitments). BUT, this year I felt was the right time, and I am so glad I did. Coming back to the Bible from the beginning after doing mostly New Testament devotionals has been an eye-opening and truly joyful experience. These people are not just characters, as they used to be when I was younger, but I'm finding them more relatable, more complex, and more, well, human. I'm using the She Reads Truth reading plan instead of going through one book at a time, and so far, I like the variety it gives me.

I've shared a couple little snippets on Instagram Stories, and on Twitter, and I've gotten a lot of positive feedback so I thought it would be a good idea to write down my thoughts not only for me to refer back to later, but also to maybe bring a fresh perspective on the Bible stories we've heard a million times (or maybe for the first time). I've found that using maps and keeping track of the family tree as it's laid out has helped a lot, so I'll try to include maps where possible. AND, I'm doing my best to not skim over sections I think I know really well - I've found that those sections I end up getting the most out of.

For the most part, I'm going to keep it as weekly posts because a) daily would just be too much, but also maybe too little, and b) monthly posts would be entirely too long! Although, I suppose some weeks will be longer than others depending on how much I got from what I read. I'm also using the NIV translation.

ANYWAY, enough intro. I wanna delve into Genesis.

Genesis 1-14

From a previous devotion, I had written in the margins that Satan makes us less ashamed of sin (the thing that separates us from God) and more ashamed of ourselves (the thing that links us to God). I tried to keep this in mind as I read about Adam and Eve and the fall of humanity.

As I reread the story of Noah, it really is a crazy account. Noah was already 500 years old when he became a father, and 600 years old when the flood happened. Whoa. Also, I have wondered a few times since reading it, how bad the people were in Noah's time in comparison to now. I wonder if God still feels that pain in his heart looking at humanity now that he felt when he decided to wipe them off the face of the earth then. And yet, Noah and his family were the only righteous people to find favor in God's eyes.

So he told Noah to build an ark out of cypress wood (a local, abundant resource), 450 feet long (so one and a half football fields) by 75 feet wide by 45 feet high. Three decks, so each floor was approximately 15 feet high give or take. Then the animals came, and they gathered enough food for the entire time. And then it rained for a month and a week (40 days & 40 nights), covered the tallest mountains by more than twenty feet - can you imagine how terrifying that would have been?? And it stayed that way, after it finished raining for 150 days, or basically five months. Then the boat landed on Mount Ararat (see right) when it probably started somewhere around modern-day Baghdad. It doesn't seem like a lot, but that's over 600 miles!

Fast forward a little bit, and we learn that Ham became the father of Canaan . . . like, the people who inhabited that ENTIRE land. And his other sons populated the rest of the earth. Then we have this really weird encounter where Noah, the drunken old man, plants a vineyard, gets drunk off his own wine, and passes out naked in his tent. His son, Ham, then walks in on him, sees him naked, and freaks. He goes to get his other brothers to help him cover Noah up, and when Noah wakes up (does he wake up in the middle of this? Otherwise, how would he know?), he curses Ham and all of Canaan. I mean, I think that's a little harsh. It wasn't Ham's fault that you passed out naked in your tent from too much of your own wine, NOAH. And, unfortunately, it was Ham's brood that later populate Sodom and Gomorrah. Sad face.

I had also never thought that, of course, everyone would have spoken the same language since they all came from the same family, but God's reason for mixing up the language was a little bizarre to me. I mean, yes, trials make you stronger, but the Bible says, "The Lord said, 'If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other'" (11:6-7). That's a heaven question I have, I guess. Why? Just because? Or was there some deeper reason? So people could study them? So we'd have more things to learn about each other? Just curious.

I also had a good time with Abram/Abraham. This guy traveled all over the near east, so I picture him as this seasoned, open-minded guy. He lived in Egypt for a while, which was the epicenter of culture and a deep, ancient, dark religion. And this cracks me up every time because he does this twice, and then Isaac does it too (once to the SAME person): he tells Sarai to say they are brother and sister because she's so beautiful. I think Pharaoh actually slept with her because it says he took her to be his wife before God inflicted diseases on him and his household (I wonder if they were of the sexually transmitted sort). LOL. After that, Abram had to leave Egypt.

But, Abram was also a badass. When Lot was taken by the kings in Jordan, Abram gathered 318 of his best trained men, and snatched Lot and the women back up in the middle of the night. The KING OF SODOM then blessed him and left him alone. I meannnn, come on.

Psalms 1-5

I think Psalms was added as a way to break up some of the heavy text you read every day. Unless something really inspires me, I'm just planning on including my favorite verses from Psalms here.

Psalm 4:1 - "Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress, be merciful to me and hear my prayer." (I correlated this to James 1:5, which says, "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.")

4:4 - "In your anger do not sin; when you are in your beds, search your hearts and be silent. Selah."

John 1-5

I will always remember the first words of John because of a choir song I sang in high school. It's also my least favorite Gospel. Why? I don't like John's writing style. For one, he makes Jesus sound like this outrageous person which, maybe He was? But, compared to Matthew, Jesus is always speaking cryptically and almost maniacal, and I just can't picture that being the case. To say to his first two disciples, "Why are you following me?" Like, come onnn. I believe more that maybe Jesus said what He said in Matthew, which was, "Hey, come with me. I'll make you fishers of men." And secondly, he ties in these little nuggets about "Jesus' favorite disciple." If Jesus preaches against favoritism, why would you be his favorite, John??

And can I also just say, I totally relate to Jesus at the wedding when He performed his first miracle. I picture Mary being this excited mom. She's known his whole life that he is the Son of God, the answer to prophecy. She was probably bursting at the seams with joy, wonder, awe, and pride when He was in the temples at a young age conversing so deeply and knowledgeably with priests. And at this wedding, she comes over and tells Jesus they're out of wine - I can just picture her adding a little wink in here. Jesus, exasperated, says, "Dear woman, why do you involve me?" *Cue eye roll* And then she leaves, making sure to tell the servants, "Hey, do whatever he tells you." So Jesus has his mother's expectations on him now - she hasn't asked him to do anything, but she, in a non-confrontational way, says, "Do something." WHO CAN'T RELATE TO THAT?

The next thing that really struck me was in chapter four, with the Samaritan woman. A lot of things were at play here - firstly, he was breaking a lot of cultural barriers. He was speaking to a woman - who was a Samaritan, and who was a known adulteress in the town. And I see myself so much in this woman just based on how she reacts to Jesus when he says that the water he gives will be a well to eternal life. She says, "Give me this water then so I don't have to keep coming to this dumb well to get water all the time!" She took it literally, and I have to wonder if Jesus, in that moment, gave her a kind, warm smile. I imagine he probably did. It reminded me that grace and the gift of Christ is for everyone - you don't have to fully get it at first. It's there, yours for the taking if you want to receive it.

Also, sassy Jesus makes an appearance. When his disciples urge him to eat, he responds, "I have food to eat you know nothing about" (4:32). Like, if I were a disciple, I don't know what my reaction would be at that point. Would I have rolled my eyes? Would I have looked over at Philip with concern and shrugged my shoulders? "He keeps saying these things," I would probably lean over and say from the corner of my mouth. "Do you know what he means?"

And then the last thing was the healing at the pool of Bethesda. I understand that Jewish law was strict, but I have always had such a hard time with how cruel these priests are written as being. A man who had been paralyzed by this pool for 38 years is healed, gets up, and carries his mat away from this place where he had been prisoner for so long, and the priests respond with, "It's the Sabbath. The law forbids you to carry your mat." LIKE, GUYS. I can guarantee these men definitely saw him sitting by the pool if he was there for thirty-eight years, day in and day out. If he's up and walking, a miracle must have happened! And the only thing they say is a chastisement, not a congratulations?

So then they come for Jesus, hard. And Jesus delivers a huge, moving speech about how God is always working and has bigger things planned for him that don't stop at the man healed by the pool. He straight up tells them that he knows they don't have the love of God in their hearts - if they truly believed in the texts as Moses wrote them, they would have accepted Jesus, but they don't. No wonder the disciples felt so moved and motivated to spread the message when they were around Jesus - he did some gutsy things, gave point-blank, no-sugar-coated speeches that made a lot of powerful people angry. And I always wonder if the disciples recalled these moments when they were in the pits of desperation after Jesus ascended to heaven and they were getting arrested, killed, or thrown out of cities and towns. I also ask myself that if there were a modern-day disciple preaching this message, would I dismiss him or her as crazy? Too extreme? Because if I did, wouldn't I have thought the same thing about Jesus too?